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History of the Arab–Israeli conflict

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Through Zionism, Middle East and Sykes–Picot Agreement

Background

Ottoman era

Tensions between the Zionist movements and the Arab residents of Palestine started to emerge after the 1880s, when immigration of European Jews to Palestine increased. This immigration increased the Jewish communities in Ottoman Palestine by the acquisition of land from Ottoman and individual Arab landholders, known as effendis, and establishment of Jewish agricultural settlements (kibbutzim). At the time, Arabs lived in an almost feudal existence on the effendis' land. Demographer Justin McCarthy estimated from Ottoman census data that the population of Palestine in 1882–3 was about 468,000, consisting of 408,000 Muslims, 44,000 Christians and 15,000 Jews. By the eve of World War I, these numbers had increased to 602,000 Muslims, 81,000 Christians and 39,000 Jews, plus a similar but uncertain number of Jews who were not Ottoman citizens. The first Statistician General of Israel, Roberto Bachi, give similar numbers except for a lower count (525,000) of Muslims in 1914.

British Mandate (1920–1948)

During the time of the Mandatory Palestine, the Balfour Declaration signed in 1917, stated that the government of Great Britain supported the establishment of a "Jewish national home" in Palestine. This exacerbated tensions between the Arabs living in Mandate Palestine and the Jews who emigrated there during the Ottoman period. Signed in January 1919, the Faisal–Weizmann Agreement promoted Arab-Jewish cooperation on the development of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine and an Arab nation in a large part of the Middle East, though this event had little to no effect on the conflict.

In 1920, the San Remo conference largely endorsed the 1916 Anglo-French Sykes–Picot Agreement, allocating to Britain the area of present-day Jordan, the area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, and Iraq, while France received Syria and Lebanon. In 1922, the League of Nations formally established the British Mandate for Palestine and Transjordan, at least partially fulfilling Britain's commitments from the 1915–16 McMahon–Hussein Correspondence by assigning all of the land east of the Jordan River to the Emirate of Jordan, ruled by Hashemite king Abdullah but closely dependent on Britain, leaving the remainder west of the Jordan as the League of Nations Mandatory Palestine. While the British had made promises to give both Arabs and Jews land, the British claimed they had never promised to give either side all of the land. Rising tensions had given way to violence, such as the 1920 Nebi Musa riots, and Jaffa riots of 1921. To assuage the Arabs, and due to British inability to control Arab violence in the Mandatory Palestine any other way, the semi-autonomous Arab Emirate of Transjordan was created in all Palestinian territory east of the Jordan river (roughly 77% of the mandate).

The conflicting forces of Arab nationalism and the Zionist movement created a situation which the British could neither resolve nor extricate themselves from. Pogroms in Russia and Ukraine as well as Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany created a new urgency in the Zionist movement to create a Jewish state, and the evident intentions of the Zionists provoked increasingly fierce Arab attacks against the Jewish population (most notably in the preceding 1929 Hebron massacre, the activities of the Black Hand, and during the 1936–39 Arab revolt in Palestine). The British-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, led opposition to the idea of turning part of Palestine into a Jewish state.

In seeking support against British rule in Palestine, the Grand Mufti sought alliance with the Axis powers; Britain responded by banishing the Mufti (who spent much of World War II in Germany and helped form a Muslim SS division in the Balkans), curbing Jewish immigration, and reinforce its police force. The Jewish leadership (Yishuv) adopted a policy of restraint and defensive action while criticizing Britain for its conciliation of Arab violence and revising its commitments under the Balfour Declaration. Dissatisfaction with this approach led some members to split from the Haganah and form the Irgun, a more militant underground group later led by Menachem Begin.

A British Royal Commission of Inquiry that came to be known as the Peel Commission was established in 1936. In its 1937 report, it proposed a two-state solution that gave the Arabs control over all of the Negev, much of the present-day West Bank, and Gaza and gave the Jews control over Tel Aviv, Haifa, present-day northern Israel, and surrounding areas. The British were to maintain control over Jaffa, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, and surrounding areas. The two main Jewish leaders, Chaim Weizmann and David Ben-Gurion had convinced the Zionist Congress to approve equivocally the Peel recommendations as a basis for more negotiation. The Arabs, however, rejected it while demanding cessation of immigration and land sales to Jewish people. The Arabs' demands prompted the British to stop Jewish immigration, thus preventing refugees from escaping the Holocaust.

Jewish violence against the Mandatory Palestine continued to mount throughout the later half of the 1940s, with attacks by the Irgun, assassination of British authorities officials by the Lehi, and the 1946 King David Hotel bombing.

In 1947, the population was reported as 1,845,000, consisting of 608,000 Jews and 1,237,000 Arabs and others.

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